Social Play in an Exergame: How the Need to Belong Predicts Adherence

The general trend in exercise interventions, including those based on exergames, is to see high initial enthusiasm but significantly declining adherence. Social play is considered a core tenet of the design of exercise interventions help foster motivation to play. To determine whether social play aids in adherence to exergames, we analyzed data from a study involving five waves of six-week exergame trials between a single-player and multiplayer group. In this paper, we examine the multiplayer group to determine who might benefit from social play and why. We found that people who primarily engage in group play have superior adherence to people who primarily play alone. People who play alone in a multiplayer exergame have worse adherence than playing a single-player version, which can undo any potential benefit of social play. The primary construct distinguishing group versus alone players is their sense of program belonging. Program belonging is, thus, crucial to multiplayer exergame design.